Aside from my main project, I have been helping get another mass spectrometer in the lab up and running: the flowing afterglow. This instrument allows us to conduct reactions in the flow tube to produce ions using volatile compounds. In addition, temperature and pressure can be controlled in the instrument to create an atmospheric environment for these reactions.

I can’t believe this is my last blog post. These past couple weeks have been very productive and I feel like I am ending on a good foot. I have worked on data cleaning and coding – two processes which can be daunting but are very essential to the research process and getting the best results possible.

I am shocked how fast time has flown by! The past week I have been just finalizing the Oddball task to get it ready to run participants in the fall. I will be running two versions of the task (A and B), and even though I have already coded the A version I needed to go through and randomize the B version so we can randomly assign participants to one version or another. This is to ensure test validity and to make sure we have the most accurate results possible.